COVINGTON, Ga. — County Chairman Marcello Banes says he suggested a county-owned event facility to state officials for use as a mass COVID-19 testing site because it was the only location in Newton County that met their specifications.

The Georgia Department of Public Health is searching for an appropriate Newton County site for testing individuals for COVID-19, Banes told the Newton County Board of Commissioners Tuesday.

Banes said he was awaiting word from the state department about use of the county government’s Gaither’s At Myrtle Creek Farm event facility in south Newton as a test site.

“As soon as I hear from the state we’ll bring it to the Board,” he said. “It’s not just in my hands.”

Commissioner Alana Sanders said the Board needed a plan for a mass site because a surge may be coming following students’ recent return to school after the holidays.

“We have to provide a COVID mass test (site) here in Newton County instead of sending our citizens to Rockdale. A lot have went to Madison, Georgia. They’ve gone to get tested in other counties,” she said.

A few small test sites were available in Newton but a mass test site was needed, she said.

“We need to plan that if there’s another surge. There’s another variant out,” Sanders said.

Banes said the state department wanted a site that could hold about 150 to 200 vehicles and not be located on or near a major thoroughfare. 

“One of the main concerns from the state was they’ve got to have a place where it would not affect traffic,” Banes said. 

He said Gaither’s was “the only site I know of” in the county that met the state’s specifications for space and effect on traffic. 

Sanders said she wanted the county to consider finding privately owned, vacant parking lots as test sites, in addition to Gaither’s.

However, Banes said that if a COVID test site was placed somewhere inside Covington, it likely would be near a main road and demand for the testing would clog traffic.

He noted that vehicles lining up for COVID-19 services at the department’s Springfield Baptist Church site on Iris Drive in Conyers regularly creates traffic backups on a major road in Rockdale County.

Banes said if the department selects Gaither’s as a test or distribution site, the county would need to apply gravel to some roads around the facility.

Commissioner Demond Mason said the church he attends works with a company that operates mobile COVID-19 testing labs that offer the service to about 700 people a day.

Mason said it could save the county the cost of staffing a unit at a permanent site.

Banes said the Board needed to wait to see the results of Mason’s research into mobile labs as possible test sites in Newton, in addition to the state department’s decision.

Commissioner J.C. Henderson said he disagreed with use of Gaither’s because of its ties to the antebellum South and enslavement of Black Americans. 

“Surely someone has another location,” he said.

Newton County operates Gaither’s as an event facility. It includes a farmhouse dating to the 1850s, some historic outbuildings and two 19th century cemeteries, including one believed to be a slave cemetery.     

The county bought the site during planning for the Bear Creek Reservoir project, which was later abandoned.